The shelter industry has terminology for their unique field of work, and though there are no exact standards for consistent definitions, many words have meanings based on their usage.
Animal control has the municipal function of picking up stray dogs and cats and investigating reports of animal abuse, dog bites or animal attacks. Stray, lost, or abandoned pets picked up off the streets are usually transported to the local animal shelter or pound. Uncomplicated stray cases are usually kept for a period of time, called the stray hold. After the holding period, an animal is considered forfeited by its owner, and may become available for adoption. Animals involved in attacks or bites are placed in quarantine and are not available for adoption until investigations or legal cases are resolved.
Many shelter policies allow individuals to bring there animal into the shelter. An open admission shelter will accept any animal regardless of reason, and is usually a municipal-run shelter or a private shelter with a contract to operate for municipality. Municipal shelters may limit incoming animals to those from the area in which they serve. A managed admission shelter requires an appointment and will restrict admission of animals to fit their available resources. Limited admission shelters are usually private without municipal contracts, and they may limit their intake to only highly-adoptable and healthy animals.
An animal in a shelter has four outcomes: return to owner, adoption, transfer to another shelter, or euthanasia.
Euthanasia is the act of putting an animal down. A high kill shelter euthanises many of the animals they take in; a low kill shelter euthanises few animals and usually operates programs to increase the number of animals that are released alive. A shelter's live release is the measure of how many animals leave alive compared to the number of animals they have taken in. A no kill shelter practices a very strict live release rate. Since there is no standard of measurement some shelters compare live releases to the number of healthy and adoptable animals, while others compare live releases to every animal they took in.
Shelter partners are rescue groups, fosters and sanctuaries.
A retail rescue takes advantage of right-of-first-choice of the free or cheap inventory of animals to flip shelter-pulled animals under the banner of adoption with little to no retraining or veterinary care between pulling a dog and selling it.
Many shelters routinely spay or neuter all their adoptable animals and vaccinate them for rabies and other routine pet diseases. Shelters often offer rabies clinics or spay-neuter clinics to their local public at discount rates. Some shelters participate in trap-neuter-return programs where stray animals are captured, neutered and vaccinated then returned to the location they were picked up.
